Formations along the wall of the Big Room, near Crystal Spring Home.
Carlsbad Caverns 1942, Ansel Adams

Roy, William
Sneffelsjokull, 1975
Acrylic on canvas

play

"Summing up the formal characteristic of play, we might call it a free activity standing quite consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life as being ‘not serious’ but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings that tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress the difference from the common world by disguise or other means."

Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens; a Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955.


"It is worth noting that play is categorized as an informal learning technique, regarded as advanced behavior seen only in developed vertebrates with the security for leisure time: big cats, orcas, human beings, etc."

Shewchuck, Gregory. "Burn Yourself Completely", Arthur 31 (Oct. 2008): 22.

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Tlingit tunic, ca. 1875. 

Alaska 
Mountain goat wool, yellow cedar bark wood, fur.
National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution
Photo by Ernest Amoroso